Tradespeople and technicians are spending almost a full working day every week on low-value tasks, such as inputting manual data or summarising jobs, costing thousands of dollars, a Salesforce survey has found, as it launches a new version of Agentforce. Information gathering, customer documentation, permit filings, and other administrative tasks use up around 30% of […]
Tradespeople and technicians are spending almost a full working day every week on low-value tasks, such as inputting manual data or summarising jobs, costing thousands of dollars, a Salesforce survey has found, as it launches a new version of Agentforce.
Information gathering, customer documentation, permit filings, and other administrative tasks use up around 30% of a technician’s average working time, according to the Salesforce report – more than the 28% spent on delivering services.
With 37% of workers claiming admin is keeping them from doing their actual jobs, resulting in two-thirds of all technicians and tradespeople admitting burnout on a monthly basis – with the figure even higher in manufacturing (71%) and the public sector (72%).
This is also costing businesses significant money, Salesforce claims. The CRM vendor estimates that, based on the US average hourly wage ($36 per hour), companies with 1,000 full-time technicians would face a weekly loss of over $260,000 due to admin tasks.
“Technicians and other workers in the field are the backbone of our economy. Yet, amid a growing skilled labour shortage, a tightening economy, and rising materials prices, they are being stretched thinner than ever before,” said Taksina Eammano, EVP & general manager of field service at Salesforce.
“To maintain critical infrastructure and the level of service today’s consumers expect, AI is a necessity. Solutions like Salesforce’s Agentforce, which provide autonomous AI agents that can take on mundane and time-consuming tasks like scheduling, will take the busywork off the plates of these critical workers so they can focus on what really matters: keeping our world running,” she added.
The data was sourced from a double-anonymous survey of full-time tradespeople and technicians in the US. Respondents included those in roles such as equipment installation, maintenance, and repair; trade work; public works; on-site medical care, and building inspection.
It also found that scheduling conflicts ranked as the top efficiency barrier for technicians, who revealed that 47% of their appointments don’t occur within schedule.
Field Agents
Salesforce revealed its survey as the company announced plans to expand its agentic AI offering, Agentforce, to provide features for technicians and tradespeople operating on location.
Agentforce for Field Services is a digital labour platform that aims to support dispatchers and technicians through AI agents that reduce scheduling bottlenecks and tackle time-consuming admin tasks.
Salesforce launched Agentforce at its Dreamforce event in San Francisco in September. The agentic platform helps its customers build AI agents that can manage tasks, such as dealing with customer queries.
The Field Services offering will use pre-built topics and actions, underpinned by Salesforce’s hyperscale data engine Data Cloud, to execute tasks on behalf of the technician.
Tasks that can be programmed into the platform include scheduling appointments, resolving schedule gaps, summarising a work order and playing this back to the worker, troubleshoot on-site issues, and help draft a post-work summary of the job.
“Agentforce for Field Service redefines how work gets done in critical industries like manufacturing, telecommunications, utilities, and consumer home services,” added Eammano.
“Powered by data and intelligence, this is a massive leap in AI innovation that tackles the inefficiencies that plague field workers today, solving the pain of back-and-forth scheduling while giving field reps the power to make context-aware decisions and handle real-world nuances more effectively.”
The service launched today with several features set to come online in the coming months. Appointment scheduling is set to be amde available from May 2025, while onsite troubleshooting is scheduled to launch in June, Sallesforce said.
The launch comes as Agentic AI has moved to the forefront of discussions around enterprise AI, with other vendors joining Salesforce in launching agents for their business customers.
